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Russian Federation1IHF FOCUS: elections and referenda; freedom of expression and the media; judicial system; political killings; torture, ill-treatment and police misconduct; prisons and detention facilities; intolerance, xenophobia, racial discrimination and hate speech; asylum seekers and immigrants; social and economic rights; trafficking in human beings; human rights defenders; Chechnya. In 2003, human rights developments in the Russian Federation were dominated by three issues: the run up to the presidential elections in March 2004, the Duma parliamentary elections in December and the election of Akhmed Kadyrov, a pro-Moscow former head of the Chechen administration in the October presidential election in Chechnya. The legitimacy of the election of Kadyrov, as well as a March referendum in Chechnya on a new local Constitution, was disputed by international organizations such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe—as well as the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) and the IHF. In the run-up to the presidential election, the government tightened its grip on the media and in June closed down the last independent nationwide TV station, TVS, itself the remnants of TV-6 that was forced off the air in 2002. TVS was abruptly replaced by a state owned sports station. Following the Duma elections, the OSCE criticized government control over the media, which, it said, gave unequal support to pro-governmental parties and seriously distorted the outcome of the elections. The effect of the armed conflict in Chechnya continued to be felt in Moscow during the year. On 2 July, two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in the outskirts of Moscow, killing 16 people queuing up for an outdoor rock festival.2 On 9 December, a woman who the authorities said was a Chechen, blew herself up outside the Hotel National. She was said to have been en route to the Duma located just 200 meters away. The blast killed six people and injured 14 others. The attacks were followed by a tightening of document checks in Moscow of people with Chechen and Caucasian appearance and led to an increase in reported incidents of discrimination against these minority groups. Sporadic instances of violence took place in Chechnya and the surrounding republics. In December changes were made to the Criminal Code and a specific definition of torture was finally introduced in article 117. The new definition is generally considered better protection against torture, however it still fails to mention the involvement of officials that commit acts of torture, which is part of the international definition of torture. Journalists, politicians and human rights defenders continued to be targets of threats, violent attacks and kidnappings. Reporting on Chechnya and on corruption were the main subjects they were persecuted over. In at least two cases of such persecution, the victims had been involved in investigating Federal Security Bureau (FSB) interference in the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow blamed on Chechens separatist fighters. The MHG’s local representative in Chechnya, Imran Ezhiev, was kidnapped in March by unknown men in Chechnya and held for three days. Ali Astamirov, a local Chechen Agence France Presse journalist was kidnapped in Ingushetia in July and has not been seen since. The obligation for Russian citizens and for people of other nationalities who resided in Russia to carry identification documents at all times was ruled on by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In the case of Smirnova v. Russia, the ECtHR held that official seizure of an internal passport could be a violation of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)—right to a family life—if not done in accordance with the law. It established that Russians had to prove their identity “unusually often” and deprivation of a passport could therefore represent “a continuing interference with the applicant’s private life.”3 Elections and Referenda4 State Duma ElectionsOn 7 December, elections were held to the State Duma, one of the two houses of the Federal Assembly, which is the Russian Parliament. Of the 450 deputies in the Duma, half are elected according to single mandate district constituencies and the other half are allocated according to political party blocs that gain more than 5% of the vote. The OSCE stated after the election that the election process was, in principle, well administered but that there were widespread abuses of executive authority and state resources by pro-government parties. “Overall, the pre-election campaign was characterized by unequal opportunities afforded to candidates and political parties in the media,” the OSCE stated. The whole democratic election system was said to be jeopardized because of media bias (see below).5 Prior to the elections, people who supported opposition parties financially were arrested. The most prominent of them was the CEO of the oil company Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. State media featured widespread criticism of the so-called “oligarchs” during the campaign and also criticized the opposition parties that had received funding from them: the liberal parties Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (SPS). All political parties, therefore, did not compete on equal terms and Yabloko and SPS fell short of the required 5% minimum and failed to get their parties into the Duma according to the party bloc allocation system. Together the two parties managed to secure a handful of places according to the single mandate constituencies allocation system. Other deficiencies observed by the OSCE during election day were: failure to guarantee voter confidentiality in some districts and petty mistakes when registering candidates which ultimately led to the disqualification of that candidate. The Communist Party (KPRF) alleged that the party that had gained the majority, United Russia, had meddled with the computerized vote counting process in order to prevent the two liberal parties from reaching the necessary 5%-threshold, which was necessary for being represented in the Duma. The authorities did not launch an investigation into these allegations. As a result, the only real “opposition party” after the election was KPRF.6 The rigid registration rules for voters caused further concern. Some minority groups were effectively barred from voting because they were unable to obtain permanent registration despite being legally entitled to do so. This problem especially affected the Meskhetian Turks in the Krasnodar Krai region.7 Freedom of Expression and the Media Directory: file upload file upload -> Honorary chairman file upload -> Country of Origin Information Report file upload -> 7th rmutic full Paper Format 1st Authors Name1/ 2nd Authors Name2 file upload -> Idaho Ryan White Part B/ adap policies Manual fy 2012 file upload -> 23rd Annual Meeting of the Philanthropy Roundtable Welcome and Opening Comments: Strengthening our Free Society file upload -> Catch Me If You Can: Evaluating Android Anti-Malware Against Transformation Attacks abstract file upload -> Avaya Conference Phones: Avaya B149 Analog Conference Phone file upload -> Effective Risk Communication for Android Apps abstract file upload -> Human rights file upload -> Human rights Download 133.21 Kb. Share with your friends:
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